In a study of the differences in male and female descriptions of nine photographs, picture type was found to be an important variable. Twelve male and 8 female college students were asked to describe each of the photographs. Picture type was rated as high in interest to males, high in interest to females, or high in interest to both. Responses were scored for five categories of language use: word production (number of words, self-references, and color references); weakeners (self-deprecation, qualifiers such as "kind of" or "looks like"); fillers ("um,""er,""okay"); paralinguistic features (question inflection, laughter); and queries or comments to the experimenter (task-related or task-irrelevant). Picture type was found to affect length of description (shortest for female-interest pictures), color references (most for female-interest), and question intonation (most common for male-interest). The use of self-reference and self-deprecation were both associated with question intonation and laughter. Results suggest that while topic affects speech style, gender does not. (MSE)